COVID-19 and the Authority of Science.

In an attempt to respond effectively to the COVID-19 pandemic, policy makers and scientific experts who advise them have aspired to present a unified front. Leveraging the authority of science, they have at times portrayed politically favored COVID interventions, such as lockdowns, as strongly grounded in scientific evidence-even to the point of claiming that enacting such interventions is simply a matter of "following the science." Strictly speaking, all such claims are false, since facts alone never yield moral-political conclusions. More importantly, attempts to present a unified front have led to a number of other actions and statements by scientists and policy makers that erode the authority of science. These include actions and statements that: (1) mislead the public about epidemiological matters such as mortality rates, cause of death determinations, and computerized modeling, or fail to correct mainstream media sources that interpret such concepts in misleading ways; (2) incorporate moral-political opinions into ostensible statements of fact; and (3) misrepresent or misuse scientific expertise. The fundamental thesis of the paper is not primarily that such actions and statements have proliferated during the COVID-19 epidemic (though I think they have), but rather that they are unscientific and that presenting them as science undermines the authority of science. In the moral-political realm, the great power of science and the source of its authority derives from its agnosticism about fundamental moral-political claims. Science, for instance, has no built-in presumption that we should respect life, promote freedom, or practice toleration; nor does it tell us which of these values to prioritize when values conflict. Because of this agnosticism, science is recognized across a broad diversity perspectives as morally and politically impartial, and authoritative within its proper sphere. When it is infused with partisan bias, it loses that authority.

Biases in COVID-19 Case and Death Definitions: Potential Causes and Consequences.

This paper investigates three controversies involving potential causes and consequences of information bias in case and death definitions during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. First, evidence suggests China's surveillance data were biased and misinterpreted by the World Health Organization (WHO), prompting the WHO to advise nations to copy China's lockdowns. China appeared to use narrow diagnostic definitions that undercounted cases and deaths. Second, novel genomic data disseminated during the pandemic without adequate guidance from rigorous epidemiologic studies biased infection control policies in many countries. A novel genomic sequence of a virus is insufficient to declare new cases of a novel disease. Third, media reports of COVID-19 surveillance data in many nations appeared to be biased. Broadened surveillance definitions captured additional information, but unadjusted surveillance data disseminated to the public are not true cases and deaths. Recommendations include clarification of the proper use of diagnostic and surveillance case and death definitions to avoid information bias.

Facebook Comments Influence Perceptions of Journalistic Bias: Testing Hostile Media Bias in the COVID-19 Social Media Environment

News organizations increasingly use Facebook to expand their reach and foster audience engagement. However, this free platform exposes news audiences to user comments before accessing and reading news articles. This exposure shapes the visible opinion climate and has the potential to influence readers. Through the application of the hostile media bias hypothesis, the influence of Facebook comments on COVID-19 related news articles and a knowledge-based assessment on perceptions of news bias and credibility are tested using a nationwide sample of Facebook users (N = 450). Findings show that user comments enhance negative perceptions of bias and diminish perceptions of favorability. The ability for knowledge-based assessments to alleviate this negative influence may induce reactance and needs further investigation. © The Author(s) 2022.

Ai journalists and reduction of perceived hostile media bias: Replication and extension considering news organization cues

As news organizations struggle with issues of public distrust, artificially intelligent (AI) journalists may offer a means to reduce perceptions of hostile media bias through activation of the machine heuristic-a common mental shortcut by which audiences perceive a machine as objective, systematic, and accurate. This report details the results of two experiments (n = 235 and 279, respectively, U.S. adults) replicating the authors' previous work. In line with that previous work, the present studies found additional support for the argument that AI journalists' trigger machine-heuristic evaluations that, in turn, reduce perceptions of hostile media bias. Extending that past work, the present studies also indicate that the bias-mitigation process (if AI, then machine-heuristic activation, therefore perceived bias reduction) was moderated by source/self-ideological incongruity-though differently across coverage of two issues (abortion legalization and COVID-19 vaccine mandates). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Fact-checking, fake news, propaganda, media bias, and the covid-19 infodemic

Social media have democratized content creation and have made it easy for anybody to spread information online. However, stripping traditional media from their gate-keeping role has left the public unprotected against biased, deceptive and disinformative content, which could now travel online at breaking-news speed and influence major public events. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, a new blending of medical and political disinformation has given rise to the first global infodemic. We offer an overview of the emerging and inter-connected research areas of fact-checking, disinformation, "fake news'', propaganda, and media bias detection. We explore the general fact-checking pipeline and important elements thereof such as check-worthiness estimation, spotting previously fact-checked claims, stance detection, source reliability estimation, detection of persuasion techniques, and detecting malicious users in social media. We also cover large-scale pre-trained language models, and the challenges and opportunities they offer for generating and for defending against neural fake news. Finally, we discuss the ongoing COVID-19 infodemic. © 2022 ACM.

Frontiers: The Persuasive Effect of Fox News: Noncompliance with Social Distancing During the COVID-19 Pandemic

To what extent do mass media outlets influence viewers' trust in scientific evidence and compliance with behavior recommended by scientific experts? Exploiting the U.S. lockdown period of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, we analyze a large longitudinal database that combines daily stay-at-home behavior from approximately 8 million mobile phones and local viewership of cable news networks. Early in the pandemic, several of Fox News' hosts downplayed the severity of the pandemic and the risks associated with the transmission of the virus. A combination of regression analysis and a natural experiment finds that a 10% increase in viewership of Fox News in a zip code causes a 0.76 percentage-point reduction in compliance with stay-at-home behavior. The results imply a media persuasion rate that is larger than typical advertising persuasion rates on consumer behavior. Similar analyses using viewership of MSNBC and CNN, which supported lock down measures, were inconclusive but suggested a smaller, positive effect on compliance with social distancing regulations.

The safest time to fly: pandemic response in the era of Fox News.

We document a causal effect of the conservative Fox News Channel in the USA on physical distancing during COVID-19 pandemic. We measure county-level mobility covering all US states and District of Columbia produced by GPS pings to 15-17 million smartphones and zip-code-level mobility using Facebook location data. Using the historical position of Fox News Channel in the cable lineup as the source of exogenous variation, we show that increased exposure to Fox News led to a smaller reduction in distance traveled and a smaller increase in the probability of staying home after the national emergency declaration in the USA. Our results show that slanted media can have a harmful effect on containment efforts during a pandemic by affecting people's behavior.

Intergroup Contact, COVID-19 News Consumption, and the Moderating Role of Digital Media Trust on Prejudice Toward Asians in the United States: Cross-Sectional Study.

BACKGROUND: The perceived threat of a contagious virus may lead people to be distrustful of immigrants and out-groups. Since the COVID-19 outbreak, the salient politicized discourses of blaming Chinese people for spreading the virus have fueled over 2000 reports of anti-Asian racial incidents and hate crimes in the United States. OBJECTIVE: The study aims to investigate the relationships between news consumption, trust, intergroup contact, and prejudicial attitudes toward Asians and Asian Americans residing in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic. We compare how traditional news, social media use, and biased news exposure cultivate racial attitudes, and the moderating role of media use and trust on prejudice against Asians is examined. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was completed in May 2020. A total of 430 US adults (mean age 36.75, SD 11.49 years; n=258, 60% male) participated in an online survey through Amazon's Mechanical Turk platform. Respondents answered questions related to traditional news exposure, social media use, perceived trust, and their top three news channels for staying informed about the novel coronavirus. In addition, intergroup contact and racial attitudes toward Asians were assessed. We performed hierarchical regression analyses to test the associations. Moderation effects were estimated using simple slopes testing with a 95% bootstrap confidence interval approach. RESULTS: Participants who identified as conservatives (ß=.08, P=.02), had a personal infection history (ß=.10, P=.004), and interacted with Asian people frequently in their daily lives (ß=.46, P<.001) reported more negative attitudes toward Asians after controlling for sociodemographic variables. Relying more on traditional news media (ß=.08, P=.04) and higher levels of trust in social media (ß=.13, P=.007) were positively associated with prejudice against Asians. In contrast, consuming news from left-leaning outlets (ß=-.15, P=.001) and neutral outlets (ß=-.13, P=.003) was linked to less prejudicial attitudes toward Asians. Among those who had high trust in social media, exposure had a negative relationship with prejudice. At high levels of trust in digital websites and apps, frequent use was related to less unfavorable attitudes toward Asians. CONCLUSIONS: Experiencing racial prejudice among the Asian population during a challenging pandemic can cause poor psychological outcomes and exacerbate health disparities. The results suggest that conservative ideology, personal infection history, frequency of intergroup contact, traditional news exposure, and trust in social media emerge as positive predictors of prejudice against Asians and Asian Americans, whereas people who get COVID-19 news from left-leaning and balanced outlets show less prejudice. For those who have more trust in social media and digital news, frequent use of these two sources is associated with lower levels of prejudice. Our findings highlight the need to reshape traditional news discourses and use social media and mobile news apps to develop credible messages for combating racial prejudice against Asians.